Yesterday I mentioned that while school shootings – and gun violence more generally – is a substantial problem, there is an inflation and hype of the numbers. More on that here.

And speaking of “crisis” rhetoric here’s a worried story about how fewer students are majoring in education as undergraduates. It’s a crisis! Except you don’t have to major in education to go into teaching and there is some evidence that content majors are stronger preparation. Anyway, panic…

Partnership Schools is accepting applications for the role of Vice President for Advancement. The ideal candidate will be an experienced non-profit development leader who shares an unwavering commitment to preserving the legacy of urban Catholic education in America. The VP’s role in that effort will be focused on ensuring that the Partnership raises the necessary funding it needs to drive our trailblazing work managing six network schools serving over 2,000 preK-8th grade students in the south Bronx and Harlem. To achieve these results, the VP of Advancement will both support the Executive Director’s fundraising activities and be a key fundraiser themselves, responsible for all fundraising and development activities including expanding and diversifying the Partnership’s funder base as it moves from raising $8.5MM to over $12MM annually in the next four years.

Reporting to the Executive Director, the VP will develop and implement a strategic development plan and lead the Partnership Schools’ Advancement team, building an effective and efficient fundraising department. This includes hiring the team, creating the fundraising campaigns, and developing the systems and processes to track all gifts, activities, tasks, and events. In addition, the VP will work closely with the board of trustees and support board members in their fundraising role. Successful candidates will be outstanding writers, great people and project managers, and will have a track record of success in fundraising, written and oral communications, and improving existing development systems. The successful candidate will help forge new relationships to build the Partnership’s visibility, impact, and financial resources.

The school massacre in Florida is horrifying. Seventeen families grieving children they sent off to school as if on any other day. Other families facing all manner of trauma. And again, the hope that maybe this will be the one that changes politics and policies

Don’t bet on it.

If a classroom full of first-graders getting gunned down wasn’t a shock to the system, a building full of college students or 58 people at a concert, then why will this latest horror show change anything?

Gun control groups tell us they’re winning or just a few votes or little more in donations away from turning the tide. Really? The big gun debate animating Washington right now is over whether to make state concealed carry permits reciprocal among the states so that if you’re licensed to carry anywhere you’re licensed to carry everywhere. That might sound sensible except for the tremendous variation in what it takes to get a permit in different states. In practice it’s a race to the bottom that tramples on states’ rights.

In fact, what usually happens in the wake of these shootings is a loosening of gun laws, not “common sense gun reform”…

There are too many school shootings, everyone should be able to agree on that. And what happened in Florida yesterday is horrific and the idea of 17 families grieving kids who left for school that morning as on any other day is just incomprehensible. But beware the hype – a lot of the numbers being tossed around on the number of shootings this year are inflated using broad definitions – that point to a gun and violence problem in this country for sure but are not strictly speaking school shootings as we think of them. Schools have their problems but are still a pretty safe place for kids, for many kids safer than the other places they spend time each day.

Here’s Brandon Wright on the recent graduation rate news from DC and the larger implications. The basic issue here is that our school system could barely graduate two-thirds of the poor and minority kids it’s charged with educating (and is entrusted with for more than a decade of their live). People, thankfully, said do better! And here we are.

I don’t know how anyone can in any way excuse these messes. But, if you think this is all just too much to ask or the result of “accountability” as many are implicitly and explicitly saying, then how can you not support school choice? Especially for low-income Americans who most desperately need access to good schools. Because if we can’t even do this, well…

When you step back what’s happening here is people are being asked to do what they are supposed to do – graduate kids in a meaningful way – and it’s a three ring circus all around. Really not a great look.

Anyway, the reality on graduation rates this past decade or so is probably two things true at once: Some genuine improvement everyone involved can take pride in and also some BS via “credit recovery” that isn’t meaningful, credential inflation, and outright gaming. But we don’t do “two things true at once” very well in this sector.

Actually, we don’t do one thing true at once very well apparently: Inclusiveness should not mean your daughter has to dance with anyone who asks. C’mon. Today in the department of troubling overcorrections.

There is an old joke in school finance, ‘what has six balls and screws teachers? The lottery.” This article about why a school district can’t use lottery dollars for school construction has a line that gives away the game:

A Department of Education spokesperson said the Lottery money funds more than a dozen school-related programs that were formerly paid for with taxpayer dollars.

Most immediately, the new provision will create debates in some states that offer their own tax-benefits for 529 bills about whether money used for K-12 expenses, rather than the original higher education purposes of 529s, should qualify for additional state tax breaks.

KIPP’s government affairs team has a reputation for being pragmatic, dedicated to building bipartisan allies, and unwavering in our focus of keeping students at the center of all that we do. The Director of Government Affairs and Policy reports to the Senior Director of Government of Affairs and Policy and will lead KIPP’s federally facing presence inside the beltway. He/she is a member of the Government Affairs Team, who works collaboratively with the CEO, Co-Founders, KIPP Foundation Board, KIPP Through College, PR/Marketing teams as well as a coalition of high-performing CMOs and other advocates, think tanks and thought leaders. To date, KIPP’s federal affairs work has spanned K12 education policy, higher education policy, tax policy related to school facilities, and immigration policy to protect Dreamers.

The New York City Charter School Center (Charter Center) seeks to hire a skilled data and research analyst to help the Charter Center fulfill its role as an essential source of accurate and timely data, and data-driven analysis, about public charter schools, education in NYC, and related topics. The Data and Research Analyst will have primary responsibility for the data systems that allow the Charter Center to collect, maintain, analyze, and share quantitative data that bear on charter school policy questions, including managing the organization’s utilization of a CRM database (Salesforce).

An integral player in the Charter Center’s mission-critical dealings with parents, teachers, school leaders, public officials, reporters, and philanthropists, this position requires both diligent attention to detail and a driving, proactive curiosity. The Data and Research Analyst will work collaboratively with Charter Center colleagues to fulfill data requests, and provide analyses in support of the Charter Center’s advocacy agenda.

You may recall that some of the pushback on state ESSA plan evaluations was that it was just Washington knows best types trying to shape the world in their view. In fact, not everyone complaining about the quality of state ESSA plans is from Washington, some are leaders from the states…

Overshadowed by attention to the challenges faced by nonwhite high-school graduates in cities, low-income black, Hispanic, and Native American students in rural areas like this are equally unlikely to go on to college.

Our schools, on the contrary, are rooted in truth—the kind that the ancient Greeks described, the kind that teaches right from wrong and reality from fiction. Our charter schools are not Catholic—institutions that cannot be explicit about Christ throughout the day cannot be considered religious. But like Catholic schools they take seriously the desperate need to educate children in virtues like courage, justice, wisdom, and self-control. Though not explicitly religious, these are transcendental values.

While the seductive allure of converting cash-strapped Catholic schools into charters is clear, a closer look reveals that these conversions are mostly a mirage. Understanding why is crucial to charting a path forward that will actually achieve the goal of revitalizing urban Catholic education in America. So, in the midst of Catholic Schools Week, while we celebrate the unique contribution these institutions make in the lives of our families, let’s pause to examine what we lose when we convince ourselves that charter schools can take the place of Catholic schools in our communities.

“The lowest hanging fruit for policy change in the United States today is K-12,” said Stacy Hock, a major Koch donor who has co-founded a group called Texans for Educational Opportunity. “I think this is the area that is most glaringly obvious.”

That’s arguably true in terms of the opportunity to do better. But the politics….it’s not an easy place to drive change in case you haven’t noticed…

We should be concerned about the pressure kids are under and the increasing amounts of anxiety they are experiencing – and the multiple causes of that. But as Doug Lemov has noted, the push toward getting rid of grades, test scores, and standards at elite schools is a trend worth resisting unless you’re high on the idea of aristocracy. For all their problems objective measures can help increase social mobility as Jennifer Braceras argues here. Soft measures are a social insurance for people already winning the race who want to insulate themselves.

Post navigation

Statements on Eduwonk are the views of the authors alone and should not be considered those of Bellwether Education Partners or of any others within the organization. Bellwether maintains an internal culture that cultivates and respects diverse points of view and does not take organizational positions on education issues.

"designed to cut through the fog and direct specialists and non-specialists alike to the center of the liveliest and most politically relevant debates on the future of our schools"
-- The New Dem Daily

"peppered with smart and witty comments on the education news of the day"
-- Education Gadfly